Civic planners suggest a new home for M.S.G.

If there’s any hope for a new Penn Station, Madison Square Garden will have to move, and on Thursday, a group of prominent urban planners will recommend a place to move it to: a U.S. Postal Service mail-sorting facility on Ninth Avenue.

“The site of the Morgan Post Office and Annex, located between 9th and 10th avenues and 28th and 30th streets, is both large enough to accommodate a new state-of-the-art arena and a quick, three- to seven- minute walk from Penn Station,” reads the report to be issued by the Alliance for a New Penn Station, a coalition of the Municipal Art Society and the Regional Plan Association. “Relocating the Garden to this site will provide the city with a new arena and allow for the reconstruction and expansion of Penn Station, each of which can be designed to vastly improve the conditions of the district.”

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The notion that Madison Square Garden must move to save Penn Station is not a new one.

Last year, the alliance scored a significant victory when the city denied Madison Square Garden a permit to operate in perpetuity at its current location atop Penn Station. Instead, the city granted its owners a ten-year renewal, which will, in in less than nine years, be renewable again.

But this is the first time the alliance has examined possible alternative locations and determined the Morgan site is the ideal one.

The site, and the idea itself, come with several challenges.

First, the postal facility is still in use and while the U.S. Postal Service is in belt-tightening mode and could perhaps be prevailed upon to sell its Midtown location, it would still have to consolidate its operations elsewhere.

That challenge, however, pales in comparison to others confronting the alliance.

The report’s authors take pains to note that the Garden, historically speaking, isn’t exactly wedded to its current location at Eighth Avenue, between 31st and 33rd streets.

The original Garden was at the northeast corner of Madison Square, before relocating to a McKim Mead and White building on the same site. Then it moved to a larger building on Eighth Avenue, between 49th and 50th streets. It wasn’t until 1963 that the current Garden was built, on the site of the original Penn Station, which was demolished in the misguided belief rail travel was a thing of the past.

In recent years, the Garden’s owners have contemplated moving from its current building twice: In 1986, when the Garden unveiled plans to move to what is now known as Hudson Yards, a plan that died with the real estate market crash of 1988. Earlier this century, the Garden contemplated moving across the street to the Farley Building annex, a plan that also fell apart, in this case thanks to what the report calls a “political quagmire.”

Today, “the Garden is the oldest arena in the [National Hockey League] and the second-oldest arena in the [National Basketball Association],” notes the report. But it’s also the recent recipient of a $1 billion capital investment.

During the permit negotiations last year, the Garden time and again indicated it had no further interest in moving, in part thanks to its renewed investment in the facility.

On Wednesday, a Garden spokeswoman declined further comment.

Not only does the alliance think the Garden should move. It also recommends that real estate giant Vornado relocate its neighboring office tower, Two Penn Plaza, somewhere else, too.

“It’s aspirational,” said Margaret Newman, the Municipal Art Society’s executive director. “It shares the same problems that MSG does in that it has columns that go down to the track level.”

Vornado had no comment.

And then, of course, there is the question of political leadership.

“Obviously the state has to be on board,” Newman said. “Our fondest hope is that [Governor Andrew] Cuomo will take this on, that the city of New York will take this on. Both the governor and the mayor should make it a priority.”

Cuomo’s office did not respond to a request for comment, though last year he indicated he was not particularly enthusiastic about discomfiting Madison Square Garden, which is controlled by one of his donors and allies, James Dolan.

For his part, Mayor Bill de Blasio supported limiting the Garden’s permit to ten years.

"The future of Penn Station is incredibly important to the City, and Madison Square Garden plays a critical role in that," said de Blasio spokesman Phil Walzak in a statement. "The Administration hasn’t had an opportunity yet to fully review this proposal, and looks forward to examining it further."

If the alliance’s plan is fraught with obstacles, so too is the future of rail travel in the Northeast Corridor.

The Amtrak tunnels that NJ Transit uses to convey commuters to and from Midtown Manhattan are in dire need of repair, and Amtrak’s C.E.O. recently raised the prospect that they have fewer than 20 years left.

Penn Station itself was designed for 200,000 passengers a day, but now (somehow) accommodates nearly 600,000.

It’s an unpleasant and largely incomprehensible warren of passageways that have been compared to “rat tunnels.” And demand for the already overburdened facility is only expected to grow.

"What this report shows is that there is a viable alternative to the current, miserable state of affairs in the Penn Station area," said Wendy Pollack, a spokeswoman for the Regional Plan Association. "The Garden could be successfully relocated, and a world-class arena built to replace the aging existing one. And Penn Station could be rebuilt into the transit hub and civic space that the city and region require for the 21st century."

UPDATE: In an email, USPS spokesperson Congetta Chirichello described the Morgan facility as "an active and vibrant part of the postal service in New York," and said that because the "USPS is not involved in this project, " it "can offer no further comment at this time."